


Fresh Faced

by Moonrose001



Series: You have another lover [1]
Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Body Positivity, M/M, Manipulation, Pre-Serum Steve Rogers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-02
Updated: 2014-09-02
Packaged: 2018-02-15 21:26:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,882
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2244039
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Moonrose001/pseuds/Moonrose001
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>That’s when the idea had struck Steve, to stop chasing something he would never be able to reach. When he decided to throw even more things away, because what did the end of the line even mean if you didn’t really mean it?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fresh Faced

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to my wonderful beta, [Renae](http://archiveofourown.org/users/AgentRenaeShnucumbs/pseuds/AgentRenaeShnucumbs)! Go admire her [coolness](http://agentshnucumbs.tumblr.com/)!

It’s almost noon when Steve wakes up, drowning in two duvets and swimming around in loose linen and pillows bigger than his torso. He flails around, trying to reemerge from the king size bed which once upon a time might have been just big enough for Thor and him to fit. Now he feels like he is swimming around in a pool, his soft flesh sliding across the covers.

Finally he reaches the side of the bed and stumbles on to the floor. The sleepiness is heavier than the blankets and he stretches half-heartedly. Straightening, he takes some steps and all over again remembers the twist of his leg when he walks, caused by the abnormal curve of his spine. It doesn’t cause the same shiver of worry and concern it did the first couple of days; where the abnormality had alarmed him because it had felt very noticeable and that meant that something had been seriously wrong.

Funny how four years of perfect health and enhanced healing could make him forget 25 years of a disabled body. Now he has relaxed back into the creaking and groaning his body does, its complaints and protests over every little movements.

He stumbles into the kitchen and grunts a  morning to the house residents. They say something to him; Tony probably comes with some jab about Steve’s neglected runs and long hours in bed. It is almost good being half-deaf again.

He turns the cartons of orange juice around, idly looking for the difference written in letters and picks the naturally pressed juice. He has learned to stick with the basics – gluten-free bread, butter without preservatives, whole milk, fruits and veggies – because modern products are usually loaded with things he might have an allergic reaction to. He thought he’d miss having choices, miss flavors, but honestly the vaguely spiced curry Bruce made day two ]had given him vertigo and made his tongue swell up.

“Did you hear what he said?”

Steve jumps, spilling the orange juice all over the floor. He turns around and looks up at Natasha. “What?”

She smiles a bit, her eyes on the carton and Steve bows down to pick it up, guilty over the waste.

“JARVIS asked you if there was any certain food you want him to order,” Natasha tells him. Her lips are a darker shade today, which probably means she’s wearing lipstick, though her burning hair has just faded into another shade of grey. Weirdly how he still thinks of her appearance as the same pop of color.

“Oh, I’m sorry Jarvis,” he apologizes. “I’m good with the usual.”

“Very well, Captain,” JARVIS replies, and even Steve can sense that maybe JARVIS has turned up the speakers a bit.

Steve shrugs.

“You sure you didn’t want those hearing aids?” Bruce is suddenly behind him and he jumps again.

“No, I just need to get used to it,” Steve replies, bending down and wiping the floor. His  kneecaps are poking out from the shorts he usually sleeps in, still stinging from yesterday’s fall. 

Bruce looks displeased; but Steve has become familiar with the expression of a doctor’s dissatisfaction. He remembers the time where it had been different, where the doctor could tell you the answer and know you couldn’t afford it anyway, not until the war started and things were finally looking up with the economy.

Bruce shuffles around and Steve gets up, washing the cloth with juice before hanging it. He thinks it shouldn’t be this easy, going back. He thinks he should be concerned, even mortified about what might happen.

As he sits down, he settles his thoughts: This is temporary (though there is always a risk, Reed and Bruce had said, the chance that they couldn’t just activate the serum like they’d predicted) and if it works, it will be worth it. Besides, he has all sorts of medicine now; there are antibiotics for TB and pneumonia, painkillers and relievers for colds and aches and ulcers, healthier food, cleaner environment and frankly, knowledge about proper hygiene and the actual possibility of maintaining it.    

Tony switches channels beside him, multitasking on his tablet. Within ten minutes Steve drops off.  When he wakes up, Tony starts complaining. Steve suspects that the team is waiting for him to feel insecure  like this, useless, to hate being weak. But there are two things which brought him through two and a half decade of life without dying of the common cold: One of them being stubbornness and the other patience. Patience, patience and more patience with his body and contrary to what people had said back then, Steve knew its limits. He also knew that he had to earn money if he didn’t want to starve, that the next cold was inevitable and that bruises and scrapes from fights healed slowly, but rarely got infected and therefore weren’t an issue.

“Geez, how did you even live this long,” Tony rolls his eyes when Steve starts dozing at the end of his rant, only coughing mildly. “Seriously, the air is clean-filtered and JARVIS won’t let anyone remotely dirty or likely to carry virus as much as cross the threshold because of you.”

“I listened to my doctor,” Steve points out, eyeing the bottle of half-empty whiskey and Tony’s shaking fingers around the tablet. “How long haven’t you slept this time?”  

Tony straightens and Steve smirks. Of all the things that have changed, his voice hasn’t, and the stern tone still gets the Avengers jumping.

“I’ll call Bruce,” Steve continues, only smirking a little bit. “He’s in a special sort of Doctor-mood since the serum got neutralized.”

Tony squints at him and Steve knows that it isn’t only his body that has changed; his mindset had shifted too. He only eats  sparsely (and there was never much on the plate to begin with). Natasha says he’s starting to manipulate them, but really, he isn’t. Buffed up, people just acted very differently with him. Now that he didn’t hold that card anymore, he courts other tricks to get the Avengers to do what he wanted. It isn’t manipulation, just a differentl sort of prodding and another type of trigger.

He can choose a word, a word he knows is loaded with memories and when he says it an old feeling would take place. It’s not special, just the cognitive way of responding. He doesn’t manipulate, he just purposely calls what he needs out of them and they could be as disgruntled as they wanted; it’s what helps when he is commanding them on the field through the com, when it comes to them remembering that he is still in charge and that the lack of serum only made his mental processing slower not dumber.

Tony kisses his cheek and goes to their bedroom. Steve watches TV for a little while, a nature program about the temperate climate, damp and green and flat. He’s dozing off again when he hears something, no, feels something, a cooler breeze perhaps. It’s too quick for JARVIS to register, but there’s nothing wrong with Steve’s nerves, even roughened up as they are.

He stands up and his bare feet tap soundlessly as he crosses the living room to the platform. Only a few buildings are higher than Stark Tower, though the architecture and letters of the Avengers headquarters make sure it stands out. Steve almost smiles, because the building is just like the maker. JARVIS slides open the door to the platform, though the two seconds pause before he does so is enough of a statement for what he thinks of Steve walking out in the late summer wind and thin air. Steve looks around in the darkness, only slightly lit up with the platform lights.

He can’t talk with JARVIS out here, but he knows that the kind AI wouldn’t have let him out here if he had caught signs of disturbance.

For ten minutes Steve stands there in his shorts and T-shirts, thin arms tightly closed around himself to pack in his body warmth. He can’t see the stars from up here and though he gets a clear view down the streets, the surrounding skyscrapers make sure that Steve’s glance won’t go far; even though his eyes had never been keen, especially not in the darkness. When his jaw starts to shake in the cold and his breathing becomes quicker, he knows he needs to get inside again. He turns around and JARVIS is ahead to open the door for him, when he feels himself become shielded from the wind. It’s already dark out so no shadow falls on him. He can still feel the heat though, the shape of a body pressed into his back, fitting in a recognizable way. It’s a two-piece puzzle, Steve’s collection of bones, muscles and skin and the muscled chest, bulging shoulders, soft jaw line and broad chin in a special height matched specifically to Steve’s.

He remembers the first week, where he had been searching for him. How he had woken up with that soft breath against his neck, the close nose digging into Steve’s skin, trying to decipher a shape he wouldn’t find on Steve’s body anymore. That’s when the idea had struck Steve, to stop chasing something he would never be able to reach. When he decided to throw even more things away, because what did the end of the line even mean if you didn’t really mean it? He decided to become stiff and passive; stand there, amidst Bucky’s raging, stormy, black sea and be a lighthouse. Not a rescuer.

Just direction.

“Steve?” the Winter Soldier’s husky voice calls.

The blond closes his eyes and exhales slowly. There’s no accent this time.

Steve turns around and meets the searching blue-grey eyes looking down on him.

He turns his head around and tries to smile in a – not a carefree grin but maybe a lighter one. A smile which doesn’t bid Bucky everything missed. “Jerk. Where’ve you been?”

Something in Bucky’s face breaks loose and it’s like melting butter and heated syrup and drowning all at once. It’s warmth and sweet nostalgia and overwhelming. Steve carefully searches the expression for the sharp pinches of pain, the bitter, lonely strokes of flashbacks, of cryo-chambers and what Bucky’d felt was the right thing to do at the time, not understanding he hadn’t even been in the driver’s seat.

There are only hot summer days in his eyes, the smell of sweat and clumping together in a tangle of  limbs for warmth on short winter days, carnations and mandarins and Christmas and familiarity. 

“I don’t know,” Bucky replies, the vocals drawling in the Brooklyn dialect which has crept into his voice. “We should get you inside,” Bucky continues, laying a heavy, flesh arm around Steve’s shoulder. “The evenings are turning cold.”

Steve doesn’t lean in, because he never used to do that, never wanted to submit to the thought that he needed and loved the comfort Bucky always gave him so freely. He wants to now, because he’s no longer so proud, just appreciative, but it’d  burst their bubble of the past, open a door with unwelcome content. It’d be too soon. It’d indicate the future, of a change in their characters. Of things they have yet to learn.

**Author's Note:**

> Always glad to receive feedback and constructive criticism ^^


End file.
